Comments on: Can we live the good life without economic growth?http://blogs.reuters.com/hugo-dixon/2014/12/08/can-we-have-a-good-life-without-growth/
Mon, 18 Apr 2016 14:55:08 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.5By: euro-yankhttp://blogs.reuters.com/hugo-dixon/2014/12/08/can-we-have-a-good-life-without-growth/comment-page-1/#comment-1386
Thu, 11 Dec 2014 06:04:36 +0000http://blogs.reuters.com/hugo-dixon/?p=1104#comment-1386This may be the root cause that no one seems to want to talk about: never ending growth of both the population and automation translates into never ending unemployment growth.
]]>By: AlkalineStatehttp://blogs.reuters.com/hugo-dixon/2014/12/08/can-we-have-a-good-life-without-growth/comment-page-1/#comment-1385
Wed, 10 Dec 2014 20:43:28 +0000http://blogs.reuters.com/hugo-dixon/?p=1104#comment-1385No good thing can grow forever. If your dog grew forever, your yard would be 8 feet deep in dog feces.

Best to find a good size and stick with that.

]]>By: breezinthruhttp://blogs.reuters.com/hugo-dixon/2014/12/08/can-we-have-a-good-life-without-growth/comment-page-1/#comment-1382
Wed, 10 Dec 2014 02:33:06 +0000http://blogs.reuters.com/hugo-dixon/?p=1104#comment-1382The economies of Europe, China, Japan, Russia, Brazil are in deep trouble, probably irretrievably so. India is rated at Baa3 but with a “stable” outlook that I think is optimistic to the point of being silly.

The dice have been tossed and now there isn’t much to do or say from an economic perspective that will really matter until things begin to crumble again… so I, for one, welcome these occasional incursions into philosophy.

It is incumbent upon people in general and the intellgentsia in particular to pay close attention to what happens next, to evaluate whether the functions performed by the world’s current financial and political systems provides any real net value to the whole of society.

It is time now to thoughtfully consider the harm done by extreme concentrations of wealth and power. I am not opposed to the concept of profit, but the conduct of affairs that effect the entire world should be subject to some basic norms of legality and ethics.

We failed to do the right thing in response to the Collapse of 2008. Much of that red ink-tainted poison has been transformed and/or displaced into the future, but time goes on and those systems still behave wretchedly.

Adequate liquidity only exists at the pyramid’s pinnacle and precious little flows down from there. This concentration of liquidity precipitates more and more red ink which drowns genuinely healthy economic growth.

I expect that we will soon have another learning opportunity in the form widespread collapses. I hope we have the courage, this time, to do the right thing.

This time we should take legal action where appropriate and dole out lengthy prison sentences to those who broke laws or encouraged others to break laws in pursuit of wealth. Investors who weighed risk/benefit and chose poorly should be forced to take their losses no matter who they are. That would be in accordance with the true nature of free enterprise.

Financeers and politicians should not be afforded scoldings or fines when their conduct clearly demonstrates that they are little more than well-dressed, well-connected miscreants.

Financial thuggery and economic collapses disproportionately harm ordinary people. Ordinary people spend decades trying to recover from that kind of harm. In many cases, they die without ever recovering from their losses.

It makes a pipe dream of striving to achieve a good life.

]]>By: WonderfulWorldhttp://blogs.reuters.com/hugo-dixon/2014/12/08/can-we-have-a-good-life-without-growth/comment-page-1/#comment-1381
Tue, 09 Dec 2014 22:09:51 +0000http://blogs.reuters.com/hugo-dixon/?p=1104#comment-1381Why don’t you go ask the 40 – 50 percent unemployed Europeans under the age of 30 if they don’t correlate economic growth with an opportunity to build a future. Without economic growth, all societies face stagnation and for those that have created a fiction of entitlements from cradle to grave, there is no one left to pay the bills as societies grow older and the next generation remains unemployed or emigrates ( as so many Spaniards, Italians, Greeks and even French have done)…..
]]>By: QuietThinkerhttp://blogs.reuters.com/hugo-dixon/2014/12/08/can-we-have-a-good-life-without-growth/comment-page-1/#comment-1377
Tue, 09 Dec 2014 15:57:10 +0000http://blogs.reuters.com/hugo-dixon/?p=1104#comment-1377The correlation between economic growth and employment is decreasing rapidly, and the correlation between economic growth and happiness drops off sharply once basic needs have been satisfied. Western economies are producing all the goods and services their population really needs with fewer and fewer employees. However, the “Green House” seems not to understand some basics. Job sharing might have worked fine for the overpaid factory jobs that are rapidly disappearing and may still work for low end service jobs, but the best jobs are increasingly knowledge based and require a full time (or more) effort to master and keep up with the subject matter. This certainly poses problems that economic growth will neither solve nor worsen.
]]>By: S.B.K.http://blogs.reuters.com/hugo-dixon/2014/12/08/can-we-have-a-good-life-without-growth/comment-page-1/#comment-1374
Mon, 08 Dec 2014 17:08:23 +0000http://blogs.reuters.com/hugo-dixon/?p=1104#comment-1374Perhaps there is a magical way for a population three times greater than that when I was born in 1945 to have healthy, mobile, educated lives with a reduction in energy throughput. Religions promise peace and truth, but all want larger flocks. Businesses seek growing markets and an oversupply of labor to control wages. Governments are in massive and growing debt from spending more than they ‘earn’ from taxes. These three main global institutions are addicted to growth. A reversal of population growth would crash the system. It will happen….someday.
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